Kathy Bates Opens Up About Her Decision To Retire From Acting After 'Matlock' Reboot

Oscar-winning actor Kathy Bates is taking her final bow from Hollywood after a career that spanned over six decades.

The 76-year-old star of the stage, screen, and television told The New York Times that her work in the upcoming gender-flipping reboot of the TV show Matlock will be her last.

She told the newspaper:

“Everything I’ve prayed for, worked for, clawed my way up for, I am suddenly able to be asked to use all of it, and it’s exhausting.”

She added:

“This is my last dance."

Bates said she was initially planning to retire from showbiz after an unpleasant experience working on a film that she didn't mention by name.

But after reading the script for the Matlock reboot, she delayed her plans to bow out of the industry for good.

So what made her reconsider sticking around for a little while?

The actor said she was enamored by “the idea of playing a woman out to right wrongs” in the updated series that featured male lead Andy Griffith as criminal defense attorney Ben Matlock in the original series, which ran on NBC from March 3, 1986, to May 8, 1992, and ABC from November 5, 1992, to May 7, 1995.

The Memphis, Tennessee native moved to New York City to pursue acting in 1970.

Bates struggled to land acting jobs after having minor roles on stage and in a film.

She enjoyed some success in several stints as a featured actor in a variety of soap operas, including All My Children, One Life to Live, and The Love Boat throughout the 1970s and '80s, and she also earned a Tony nomination for her role in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play 'night, Mother in 1983.

But it wasn't until 1990 that Bates had her Hollywood breakthrough in the Stephen King horror classic Misery. Her maniacally marvelous portrayal of deranged super-fan Annie Wilkes—a role passed up by Anjelica Huston and Bette Midler—won her the Best Actress Academy Award. She was 41 at the time.

Her string of movie successes came the following year with Fried Green Tomatoes, followed by another King adaptation, Dolores Claiborne, in which she played the titular character and for which she was nominated for Best Actress at the 22nd Saturn Awards.

Other notable film credits included Primary Colors (1998) and About Schmidt (2002), both for which she was nominated for a second and third Oscar, respectively.

She portrayed real-life historical figures in the films Titanic (1997), playing the "Unsinkable" Molly Brown, and Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris (2011) as art collector Gertrude Stein.

She experienced a resurgence in TV with a guest appearance on Two and a Half Men playing the ghost of Charlie Harper, for which she earned her first Primetime Emmy Award.

Bates won her second Emmy for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie playing immortal racist Delphine LaLaurie in the third season of the Ryan Murphy anthology series, American Horror Story, Coven in 2013.

She returned for the fourth season of AHS, Freakshow, in which she played bearded lady Ethel Darling, the fifth season, AHS, Hotel, playing hotel clerk Iris, and the sixth season, AHS, Roankoke playing two characters: Thomasin "The Butcher" White and Agnes Mary Winstead.

In 2017, she starred in the Netflix series Disjointed, where she played the owner of a California medical marijuana dispensary.

Recent movies included The Miracle Club, with Maggie Smith and Laura Linney in 2020, and the movie adaptation of Judy Blume's coming-of-age novel, Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret in 2023.

Fans were sad to see her go, but wished her well in her well-earned retirement.

The new legal drama series Matlock, developed by Gilmore Girls producer Jennie Snyder Urman, will air on CBS on October 17, 2024.